


You Were Always There

by bagog



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluffy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:22:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bagog/pseuds/bagog
Summary: Love is about the times you needed someone most. Love is about the past as much as it is about the future. This is 7 love stories about Kaidan Alenko and John Shepard.





	1. Childhood

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this originally for Kaidan Appreciation Week 2017, but took forever to post it on tumblr because the whole thing hinges on a very particular conceit. Like all my event stories, all 7 chapters serve as both standalone stories and also as chapters of a single narrative with a common theme. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Gifted to Estalfaed, because without him I never would have actually published these at all.

Kaidan was staring up into the glaring lights, willing himself to get a migraine.

It was the first time he’d really gotten a good look at the waiting room of John Shepard Hospital: usually, when his mom brought him in, his head hurt so much he couldn’t make out much of anything. Nothing but the teal and purple pattern of the carpet under his shoes.

Now his face hurt so much, he’d actually pay for a headache to come along and take his mind off the searing pain in his lip. His mom was outside the window, probably arguing with work about needing to come in an hour late because of her son, again. Every time he was brought in with a migraine, it seemed the urgent care waiting room was always packed—loud noises and crying kids and talking, talking, talking.

But for now, it was dead. Just Kaidan and the news broadcast and all the empty, uncomfortable chairs. Kaidan pushed the wad of tissues harder into his face, winced at the bite of pain. He knew he should be grateful nobody was here to see him like this. But. Oh well.

A boy walked in, about Kaidan’s age, but a little shorter, a lot scrappier.

“Go sit down in the waiting room,” said the woman towing him in. When she took off her coat, it was obvious to Kaidan she was a nurse at the hospital. “You keep pressing on that, and once I get your paperwork done I’ll take you back.”

The nurse hustled behind the desk, and the boy turned into the waiting room. He was holding a wad of tissues too, pressed to his hairline. His eyes immediately found Kaidan: bright blue, sizing him up.

He had an awkward gait, and he bee-lined through the waiting room and tumbled down—almost perched—on the chair right next to Kaidan.

“Hi,” the boy said, winced when he jostled the clump of tissues pressed to his forehead.

“Um, hi.” Kaidan didn’t look him in the face. Not his blue eyes or the dark red clump of tissues. The kid had thin legs and broad shoulders, he was sitting really close.

“Are you okay?” The boy asked more like he was hoping to hear a grizzly story, but he still leaned forward and tried to catch his eye. Kaidan looked out the window: his mom looked exhausted, still arguing. He sighed.

“I’m gonna be fine. I just need some stitches, probably,” he mumbled into his own wad of bloody tissues, shrinking away just a little from the boy’s intent stare.

“Yeah, me too. What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” Kaidan fired back. The boy’s eyes got grim for a second.

“Not telling.”

“Shepard,” called the nurse from the in-patient desk. “You making friends or you making me regret bringing you in?”

“It’s cool!” Shepard called back, defiant. “Just talking!” He turned back to Kaidan when the nurse rolled her eyes and returned to her paperwork.

“’Shepard,’” Kaidan said, his lip burning with the smug little smirk.

The boy huffed, broad shoulders drooping.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

“I’m Kaidan.”

“’Kaidan,’” Shepard beamed. “Good to meet you.” He held out his hand to shake, and Kaidan fumbled to transfer his compress to his left hand to not leave Shepard hanging.

“Oh, uh.” His hand, held out for Shepard to shake, had some dried blood on the palm. Shepard looked at it and laughed. Grabbed Kaidan’s hand in a tight grip, shaking it with all the more certainty.

“Like I care!” He laughed a little too loud. “Look at me!”

“Ah, um, okay, it’s sorta gross. I should’ve washed my hands or something.” Kaidan’s palm was getting sweaty in Shepard’s grip.

“Nope.” He finally released Kaidan’s hand, but Kaidan had thought for a moment he might keep holding it for a while. “So can I see your lip?”

Kaidan looked up and out the window. His mom was holding her face in her hand, her omni-tool still glowing.

“Oh is that your mom?” Shepard said, following Kaidan’s gaze.

“Yeah. Is she?” Kaidan gestured to the in-take desk, “ _Your_ mom, I mean?”

“Nah, that’s Ursula. She picks me up once in a while to bring me in when I need to go to the hospital.”

“Okay. Um, where do you live?” Kaidan shivered when he tried to lick his lip and tasted blood.

Shepard’s eyes got dark.

“Just around. It’s not important.” He shifted in his chair, turned away. The news droned on and the lights flickered almost imperceptibly and Kaidan’s face throbbed.

“Sorry. Um. Here:” He pulled away the tissues he was pressing to his face and turned to show Shepard his cut.

“Woah!” Shepard’s big blue eyes got wide, he scooted forward in his chair till his knees knocked Kaidan’s.

One corner of Kaidan’s mouth was split open, lip to nostril. Shepard reached out one hand and gingerly touched the bridge of one of the butterfly bandages holding Kaidan’s face together. It didn’t hurt.

“Does it look pretty bad?” Kaidan asked, gently.

“It looks awesome! Does it hurt?”

“N-no.”

“Must’ve been bleeding pretty bad! How’d it happen?”

Kaidan didn’t like thinking about his blood on the ice, all the stares.

“Hockey. Took a skate to the face.”

“You play _hockey_?” Shepard crowed. “Are you good? You look like a hockey player. Man, are you gonna be some kinda hockey star? I bet! I love hockey, always wanted to play.”

They sat in silence a moment until Shepard seemed to realize he was still touching Kaidan’s face and jerked his hand away. Kaidan dabbed at his cut with the tissue, but no new bright red came away, so he left the crumpled tissue in his lap.

“Can I see yours?” Kaidan asked, nodding at Shepard’s forehead. Shepard seemed to pale.

“I don’t know. It’s… I don’t think…”

“C’mon,” Kaidan tagged his shoulder lightly, that seemed to make Shepard bristle, but his brows stayed furrowed.

“O-okay.” He pulled his hand away and just barely turned his head. Kaidan had to lean all the way forward to see the huge, smooth gash that started at his hairline above his left eye and arced back into his trimmed hair.

“That looks pretty serious, Shepard!” Kaidan cried, and that made Shepard turn his head away.

“That’s why I’m here, right?” Shepard mumbled.

“How’d that happen?”

Shepard just looked over at him, shook his head gently, eyes glassy. Kaidan nodded.

“…looks like we’ve both got some serious war-wounds today, huh?”

Shepard laughed at that.

“Yeah. I guess we do.” He smiled at Kaidan, and Kaidan did his best to smile back.


	2. Alliance Training

“I tell you Shepard, you must be the stupidest son of a bitch I ever met!” Kaminsky shook his head, half patting, half slapping Shepard on the back.

“He’s a softie, what could go wrong?” Shepard teased, trying to divert the conversation.

“End of the day, we’re all soldiers. But when you’ve got a rabid dog on your team, you point him at the enemy.” The other marine shook his head, expression serious for a moment. “But you shouldn’t prod the freak, Shepard.”

Shepard ground his molars together.

“See you later, Kaminsky.”

~~

You could count the number of biotics in the Systems Alliance Navy on fingers and toes, and big as Camp Alenko was, there was only one biotic in any of the training flights. The brass knew they wanted him trained, but it wasn’t as if anybody knew how to effectively train a biotic—even for those who didn’t think he was going to get a headache and accidentally (or purposely) flay them while they slept.

So they buried him in tech work. Medical classes. Decryption. And they insisted he train his biotics, though not a single one of them were brave enough to be in the room with him when it was time to train.

So Kaidan Alenko stood alone on the training floor, holding a squat rack in the air in a glowing blue flare, waiting for the only man who would volunteer to spar with him.

“Alenko!” Shepard declared, cracking his knuckles when he stepped out of the locker-room doors. “You’re looking sweaty already. Did you start without me?”

“Had _training_ to do, Shep,” Kaidan shot back with a smirk. “Decided if you were going to take your time prettying yourself up just to spar with little ol’ me, I might as well get started with some weights.”

“’Prettying myself up,’ so you _did_ notice.”

Kaidan let the weight drop—just a half meter—then caught it. Another half-meter—caught it. All the way down to the floor, like it was a familiar exercise.

“Hope you wore that cologne I like,” Kaidan huffed, wiped the sweat from his brow. “Gonna be wearing it on my fists once I’m done mopping the floor with you, you cocky lil’ shit.”

“Well if _that’s_ what you want, you gotta warm me up with some toys or something and I’m gonna need to go back to my room for some poppers.”

Kaidan blushed and stammered, and Shepard howled with laughter.

“Sh-I mean. Shouldn’t I… Feels like I should buy you dinner first or something, at least, right?” Kaidan tried to recover.

“You already owe me dinner for volunteering to be your biotic test dummy.” Shepard laughed, slapping Kaidan’s shoulder and shaking the cramp out of his legs.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll give you my beer tonight or something.”

“Nah, I’m looking forward to this.” Shepard squinted at him, “Actually, you look like you could use some food right now. You okay?”

“Biotics. They burn a lot of calories. I need to be getting more each day, but the Sergeant won’t approve a larger ration.”

He really did look bad, and Shepard had already resolved to give him part of his supper when they were done.

“So that’s why you’ve been avoiding training?”

“Sorta…” Kaidan looked away.

“Hm. Okay, how do we get started here?”

Kaidan scratched his head.

“That’s the problem. I… other than having you shoot at me… I mean, at BAaT we never sparred with opponents who weren’t biotic. I… I haven’t really used my biotics on a living thing since… since…”

“What’s BAaT?”

Kaidan blanched.

“…Biotics Acclimation and Temperance training.”

“That where they taught you how to use your powers?”

“They tried, yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck and Shepard could tell a migraine was brewing. “I really… I don’t want to do this. And I don’t really know what I’m doing, honestly. Sorry.”

Shepard looked over at the squat rack—at least 2300 kg lifted up in the air like it weighed nothing. Caught with Alenko’s brain. He gulped.

“Well, I guess, just come at me like I _was_ biotic and… I’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out together.”

Kaidan looked up, eyes set and smile determined. He nodded firmly.

“…thanks for training with me, Shepard.”

“Any time. I’m your man.”


	3. Friendships

_“Vanessa is that a_ chicken _I just saw in your apartment?”_

Kaidan and Doctor Chakwas raised their bottles in unison and took a sip.

“Alenko, this is going to kill me.”

“Your idea, Doctor.”

“Don’t throw _that_ in my face.” She waggled a finger in Kaidan’s direction, “I’m empty. Serve me up another.”

Kaidan handed her a second bottle.

The Normandy was a sleek, compact ship, but Kaidan was happy he found a little place to get away from the rest of the crew. It was practically a necessity on any given posting, and he was old enough now to be able to admit that. When he was younger, it was important for him to endure the stares of his crewmates—circling around him, pretending to be ‘going about their business’ so they could try to see if his amp-port was visible. Not believing him when he said it wasn’t.

It was equally important to bear the headaches in public without flinching, without showing how much he was reeling. But by now, First Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko realized that he needed a place to get away from everyone else, especially if he was going to be under the microscope on a tiny frigate. On Arcturus, it was quadrant two secondary cultivation bay. On the _Karachi_ , it was the aft battery storage unit.

Only isolated part of the Normandy ended up being Dr. Chakwas’ lab—accessed through medbay. The fact that Dr. Chakwas _also_ seemed to be a terrific person was a huge plus, and after two successful movie nights, both had sort of settled into the routine.

 _Vanessa’s Five-Date Weekend_ was projected onto the bulkhead of the medical lab, Chakwas had hauled in a crate of medigel for each of them to put their feet up.

 _“Vanessa, gurrrrl, you scheduled_ FIVE DATES _this weekend?”_

Karin and Kaidan both took a sip, groaning in unison.

“If I were re-writing this game,” Karin hiccupped, “I think I’d strike that one from the list. It’s just too much.”

“We’re not even halfway through the movie.” Kaidan nodded, “Maybe next time, we just watch that Blasto movie or something. Leave the alcohol alone.”

“Soon as our new XO arrives, we’ll be leaving on shakedown.” She held the cool bottle to her forehead, “Not sure how our little movie nights will work once we’re out of dry-dock.”

“Maybe he’ll be great,” Kaidan laughed. “And we’ll make it work.”

“Will you be inviting _Shepard_ to our next movie night?” Karin turned a sly smile on him, not taking her eyes off his expression even as she sipped her drink to the reappearance of Vanessa’s chicken on the ‘screen’.

“I thought you said you weren’t the type to ask about a man’s dating life?”

“So _dating_ is it?”

“I didn’t—that’s not—“ Kaidan took a frazzled swig. “We’re just getting to know each other, you know? Been nice to make friends here in drydock while we’re waiting on the new XO. Shepard thinks so too. It’s just… nice.”

“Verrrrrrrrrry nice,” Karin crooned.

“I’m not going to start a relationship with a shipmate!” Kaidan shook his head.

“Not the first, not the last.” Chakwas waved her pointer fingers in the air as if she were conducting an unseen orchestra accompanying her singsong voice. “Not the first to say he won’t, not the first to do it anyway. Not the first to really mean it and not the first to decide it’s not worth it.”

“Fair enough.”

 _“But Vanessa if you love Tony, why are you even_ bothering _with the other four dates on your **five date weekend**?!”_

Both soldiers groaned and took a swig.

“It’s not as if I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to him, myself,” Chakwas laid her head against her shoulder, stifling a yawn by balancing her bottle against her lip. “You should hear the way he talks about you. That man is as free with his talk as you are reserved.”

“He asks so many questions…”

“ _So_ many questions!”

“And he’s always leaving so suddenly, like he just remembered he left the stove on, or something.”

“Every single time.” Chakwas chortled, “I messaged him last week and he never answered. I know he read it, he just never replied.”

“He never does,” Kaidan smiled into the bottom of an empty bottle, set it aside to grab a new one from the cooler. “Great guy, though. Would cut off his arm for you.”

“Great kisser.”

Kaidan whipped his head around.

“Wh-what?”

“Great kisser. Dennis Yao,” Karin idly pointed to the screen, where ‘Vanessa’ was really getting steamy with ‘Perry,’ her second of five dates. “I don’t know why she’s so into Tony when she’s got a man like that around.”

“Oh,” Kaidan dropped his chin and shook his head. “Yeah, uh. Yeah.”

Chakwas turned in her chair, looking more than a little smug.

“Let’s at least have him at our next little movie session,” she tapped her beer, “Less of this, though.”

Kaidan wasn’t too sure about that, the lab was supposed to be his personal space. The more the rest of the crew saw it as an inviolable domain of the steady ship’s doctor, the better his chances of finding it abandoned when a migraine struck.

Then again, there were worse wingmen than Karin Chakwas.

“…alright.”

 _“Vanessa, I think this time you’re_ really _in love!”_

Both friends groaned around another swig


	4. Shore Leave

When things went wrong, sometimes Shepard was liable to try humor to deal with it. It was part of what Kaidan liked so much about him. And he couldn’t imagine how things could’ve gone much more wrong. Except he could, of course.

Aboard the Normandy, he and Kaidan had bonded over remembering the same pamphlet from basic which suggested shore leave locations that would keep the graduates out of trouble. One of the infamous was the Playa del Oro Aquarium, on the newly renovated Shepard City Center.

‘Glad we went to the aquarium, ay boys?’ was a popular rallying cry at the bars around just about any Alliance base, planet side. ‘Saw some pretty fish at the aquarium, huh?’ or ‘You’re not supposed to _swim_ at the aquarium’ or any of a dozen other standard and drunkenly improvised jokes usually followed. The younger crew on the Normandy didn’t seem to understand the reference, they must have discontinued that particular pamphlet, finally.

Still, when Shepard had woken up after being knocked unconscious by the beacon on Eden Prime, his answer when asked how he was feeling was “Like I just spent a day at the aquarium.” And it had made Kaidan smile. Even though he’d only known the man for a matter of hours—and most of those standing vigil over his comatose body—it made an impression.

Not here they stood together, in the actual aquarium.

The Normandy was gone.

‘Shore leave’ was mandatory. So were the psych evals.

Drinking wasn’t the best idea, right now.

Other friends had contacted him when he got back planet-side, but he’d mostly spent the time with Shepard. For a man he’d known for a matter of months, there was something about him that made him feel like they’d known each other for a long time.

“You’re one of those people that reads all the little plaques, huh?” Shepard said, walking up behind Kaidan, leaning in to keep his voice low. Kaidan laughed, cleared his throat.

“Depends. Guess I was just thinking.”

“Hm?” Shepard bumped their shoulders together, slipped his hands into his pockets.

“Thinking about how we’re finally here.” In their cups, on the Normandy, they had each secretly admitted how much they’d actually like to visit the Playa del Oro Aquarium sometime. “How we got here.”

There was something comforting about it—though Shepard had worried when they first arrived—being surrounded on all sides by water. After shooting out of the flaming husk of their ship in an escape pod, floating in space for hours before rescue ships arrived, the huge panels of deep blue felt soothing, full.

“Nobody wants to get out there and hunt down the Collectors more than I do,” Shepard’s voice was just a little louder. “But…”

“There’s no way in hell we’re going to be part of the investigation.”

“…I’m a Spectre. I could just go.”

It was something neither of them had mentioned the last few days. For whatever reason, the dim of the aquarium hall made it all easier. Kaidan thought very careful about how to respond.

“’Could’ and ‘Should’ might be two different things here, Shepard.”

“What do you mean?”

An iridescent jellyfish drifted past their view, a shimmer of light in the dark tank. Behind it, a black shape seemed to emerge from nowhere, long, fast, bolting forward from the ‘depths.’

The eel slithered past the glass, well out of the way of the jellyfish. Of course nothing kept in a tank would be hunting anything else in the tank. Things were safe in the aquarium.

“I wanna get back out there too,” Kaidan said in a hushed tone. “When I think about Valerie, about Sakai… it makes me crazy to think about the friends I lost. But… I lost friends. We all lost friends.”

“Takes more than a few psych evals and a visit to the aquarium to shake off, huh?”

“Those are great steps, don’t get me wrong. But. Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Shepard sighed. Then, after a moment: “Plus, I don’t have a ship.”

“’ _We’_ don’t have a ship,” Kaidan turned on him with a determined grin. “Don’t think you’d be leaving me behind.”

“I, uh,” Shepard scratched the back of his head, took a few steps back to sit on the bench. Practically held his breath as a family strolled through behind them and Kaidan sat next to him. “I’ve been worried about you. Since the memorial. I don’t exactly no what to do to help, other than to distract you, but… I’m here if you want to talk.”

Kaidan couldn’t stop the laugh that came out of him, echoed off the glass panes. Maybe some things were just easier to say in the dark, with only the silhouettes of fish listening.

“I’ve been worried about _you._ Thought that trying to bring up what happened wouldn’t be good for you.”

Shepard smiled broadly, took his hand.

“I’m… I’m not okay. Losing my crew—so many of my crew—like that. It was awful.”

“Yeah, it was.” Kaidan swallowed. “I don’t know how I would’ve handled it if I had lost you, too, Shepard.” He said, softly, at last.

“Mm.” Shepard didn’t answer, but let his head drop to Kaidan’s shoulder.

They sat in the dark for a while, like that. The colorful shapes and the deep blue and the fullness and the quiet letting them just be two dark shapes alone together in the world.


	5. Memories

“Okay, next item.” Mom held up a large canvas with a messy painting done in bright primaries. “An early masterwork, Kaidan Alenko, circa 2160…ish.”

“Although unsigned, it was found amongst his personal affects in his family home. Curators of a local collection do not dispute its authenticity,” Dad intoned, joining in on the joke. He reached out to flip the painting over. “Despite the fact that they had hung it upside-down.”

“No I didn’t!” Mom insisted, elbowing her husband away.

“If only we could ask the artist himself…” he turned to the camera expectantly.

Across the galaxy, watching on his console, Kaidan laughed allowed and tried to hide his face behind his hand.

“I have no idea, I don’t remember at all! Why am I still looking at this?” He waved away the painting as if he could erase it from the screen itself.

“So that goes in the ‘trash’ pile, then?” Mom raised an eyebrow. “We’ve got a couple paintings, actually. More than a couple.”

“ _Therapy_ paintings!” Kaidan cried, rolling his eyes when his father appeared once again, wielding two more canvases. “Not exactly a time in my childhood I’m big on remembering!”

“Some of ‘em are pretty nice,” Dad remarked, then revealed one he was holding: a messy splash of green arranged into something like an angry face. He crowed out laughing and Kaidan couldn’t help but chuckle along with him.

“Good one, but maybe you can paint your own feelings right over them. Or just throw them away.”

“There’s  _not_ a lot on the ‘Keep’ pile, kiddo,” Mom chided with faux disapproval.

“There’s not gonna be  _anything_ on the keep pile, mom!”

“Not even this self-portrait?” Dad chortled as he held up another distorted acrylic of something that might have been the Ocham the family hamster or maybe a tree.

“ _That_ one’s you.”

“You can’t wound me with love, son.”

“Famous last words.” Kaidan and his mother said, together.

Now that mom was retiring, the Alenkos were planning on spending less time in Vancouver and moving, for all practical purposes, to the country-house, full-time. Now that it needed to be functional and comfortable, instead of quaint and rustic, the house by the orchard could no longer serve as the receptacle for every memento too old, too bulky, or too curious for the main apartment.

In his first call with his parents in almost four months, they’d spent at least an hour reviewing ‘personal affects’ that had been stored all over the house. Kaidan had tried to beg them off: he had the clothes on his back and that was about all he needed, these days. Besides, there was a lot of his life pre-service that didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore, a lot of memories he wasn’t excited to remember.

Especially on assignment. “We’re not sure when you’ll be back and we’re just trying to get everything in order so we can start fixing the rest of the place up.” His mother had said. Kaidan had no idea how much of his childhood they had saved. What’s more, fairly quickly, a third pile had formed—‘Trash’ for getting rid of the unwanted things, ‘Keep’ to be shipped to Kaidan (currently empty), and a third pile for things Mom decided she didn’t want to part with after all.

“Put that one in my pile,” Mom swiped one particular painting out of her husband’s hands. “And now for our next item.” She held up an old jacket, one he hadn’t seen since he’d just gotten back from brain camp.

“Trash,” Kaidan pinched the bridge of his nose, “That’s not even going to fit me anymore!”

“I think you might want to keep it since it’s the jacket Shepard gave you!”

“Shep-Shepard didn’t give me that jacket! I got that when I was… 17? 16?” Kaidan crowed, “I didn’t even know Shepard then.”

“I thought you and he were at Jump Zero together?” She looked at the jacket as if seeing it for the first time.

His dad poked his head back in frame, dragging Kaidan’s old skis behind him.

“No, he and Shepard met in Basic, sweetheart.”

“I didn’t mean Shepard until three years ago. On the Normandy.”

“Huh.” His mother frowned at the jacket.

“Huh.” His father stared as well.

“You were dating that boy in high school, just before you left, who was he then?”

“Not Shepard!” Kaidan was actually laughing now. He checked the time, “Speaking of which, I owe him a call right about now before my priority privileges are over for the day.”

“Oh my goodness, alright, you go do that. We love you, Kaidan.”

“Love you too, Mom. Dad.”

The screen flickered off, and in a few moments, he was waiting on Shepard to pick up. With a flash, Shepard appeared on the screen, and Kaidan couldn’t help but smile. It was late—almost 0200 station time on Alenko Station where the Normandy was docked. Shepard was just struggling into a t-shirt, still wearing a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Kaidan. Hey,” Shepard grinned. “Was wondering when you’d call, you’re always so punctual.”

“Was talking to my parents, kind of a long conversation.” He tipped his head to the side, as if it might help him see Shepard’s face, currently out of frame as he struggled to sit his t-shirt right on his torso. “You just get out of the shower?”

“I did. A few minutes ago, anyway. Just been waiting for your call.” He pushed his console back and yawned, settling back into his chair. “How’s Horizon?”

“It’s fine. Locals aren’t too excited to have an Alliance stooge around, but I’ve met a couple friendly people.” He yawned just watching Shepard yawn. And it was only 1300 on Horizon, sunlight just beginning to bear down on the courtyard outside. “You’d like it.”

“Wish I were there.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, though, you’re staying on my mind.” He leaned closer to this screen, almost conspiratorial, “My parents thought we met back in brain camp.”

Shepard laughed.

“Can you imagine?”

“All I can do is imagine.”


	6. Love Interest

Kaidan opened his eyes. There was Shepard.

In the ‘daylight’ of the Presidium, Shepard’s smile seemed tired, his stubble darker than usual. There were creases along his forehead and Kaidan had an intense desire to trace his finger along those laugh lines and brush a thumb across the cracked lips. There was a gurgling in his stomach, though, and when he tried to move his head to see where he was, the room spun. But it _was_ a hospital room: Huerta Memorial. He wanted to just let his head drop back to the pillow and let the vertigo usher him back out of consciousness as suddenly as he’d arrived…

“Shepard, hi.”

So of course, Kaidan tried to push himself upright, instead. Strong hands were on the back of his head in a second, not forcing him back into the mattress, but guiding him back.

“Shh,” it was Shepard, at his ear. Kaidan tried to let his vision refocus by concentrating on his eyes. “You’re alright, just stay down, okay?”

“How long have I been out?” His voice was hoarse and his throat hurt. Now that he thought about it, his face hurt al over.

“That depends what you remember,” Shepard chuckled. He lifted a towel by the bedside and dapped at the edges of Kaidan’s mouth. “You’ve been ‘waking up’ for the past 3 hours.”

“I remember…” Kaidan closed his eyes. “The robot. The umm—the android.” It felt odd to let Shepard prop him up, wipe his face. His body wouldn’t let him protest, though. It seemed for the moment like consciousness was a gift his body was doing him out of sheer kindness.

“Yeah,” Shepard’s eyes darted to the side, but he put a straw to Kaidan’s lips and let him drink a little water. “You’ve been in a coma for a while, thanks to that little run-in. Some of it natural, the rest, medically induced once your surgeries were done.”

“Is Liara safe?” His eyes felt heavy.

“She’s safe, Kaidan. Everyone’s safe.” He took Kaidan’s hand, a kind of affectionate look transforming his features in a way Kaidan had never seen before. “Sleep if you need to, alright? I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Kaidan shook his head, a tiny movement, side to side.

“No… I’m… I’m fine. I’m awake.”

“Okay,” Shepard’s smile wavered a little bit, and he slowly let his hand slide from out of Kaidan’s.

“Don’t look so surprised, Shepard,” Kaidan coughed, trying his best to give a convincing smile. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“You already look pretty tough,” Shepard tried to suppress a yawn, smile big as ever. “But this is maybe the fourth time in the last three hours you’ve woken up. You don’t remember any of that?” He slipped back into his chair.

“No. I, uh. Didn’t make an ass out of myself, did I?”

“Perfect gentleman as always, Alenko. Usually you make it to asking about Liara, then you pass out again.”

“How are you?” Kaidan asked after a long moment. “You look tired, Shepard, what’s the matter?”

Shepard blinked at him.

“Nothing’s the matter,” he chuckled. “I’ve just been worried about _you_ is all.”

“How… how long have you been here?”

Shepard grew hushed, looked down at his hands. Kaidan was transfixed by his eyes, the way they shone bright even with the dark circles from lack of sleep. After a long moment Shepard finally answered.

“Um, as often as I could.” He nodded gently to himself, as if pep-talking himself further. “Any time there wasn’t an immediate mission I needed to act on.”

“And how long, this time? Since the last mission?”

“Two weeks.”

Kaidan let his hand slip along the cool sheets and let Shepard take it.

“You never left my side.”

“How could I?” Shepard’s eyes seemed glassy, red rimmed.

Over the next thirty minutes, Kaidan eventually was able to sit up, was able to drink some water. Shepard caught him up on the war, and on the details of his surgeries and treatments—almost all of which Shepard himself had been there for. The amp currently plugged into and repairing his implant was a special one designed by the doctors here in the Shepard-Alenko wing at Huerta, using tech that Shepard himself had scavenged especially for the process.

Shepard had been staying at a nearby hotel, but most nights ended up sleeping in his chair.

“Thought I owed it to you to be here when you woke up.”

“You don’t  owe me anything, Shepard.” Kaidan could take the cup for himself, now, but Shepard still held it for him between sips. “Still… I’m glad you’re here.”

“No place else I’d rather be.”

Kaidan’s face was so black and blue, there was no way Shepard could notice how hotly he was blushing.

“It’s funny,” Kaidan didn’t let go of the cup when Shepard went to take it back, and instead laid his hand in Shepard’s. “After all those months of not seeing you. Took me all of one day to feel like we were… back in it together. Feels like just yesterday we were chasing Saren halfway across the universe.”

“Look at us now.”

“Yeah, look at us now.”

Shepard with his three-day beard, Kaidan looking like a human punching bag. Only a little older, but _much_ older in spirit and in body. The past three years had felt like an eternity.

“One day was all it took for me to get used to having you around, again. Just a couple hours.” Kaidan was talking too fast now, feeling a pull like the call of unconsciousness again, but this time from deeper inside him, down to the pit of his stomach. “Halfway through that mission and I suddenly didn’t feel like I’d ever go on another mission without you, again.”

“You almost didn’t, after that run-in,” Shepard couldn’t meet his eyes.

“That’s not exactly what I meant, I—“

“I know.” Shepard looked up. “We’re good together.”

“And I know it’s been weeks for you, but for me it feels like yesterday and…” Kaidan pinched the bridge of his nose. “I should have said it that day, and I can’t tell if I’m just rushing because I’m so afraid I’m gonna pass out again or something else will happen. But… I wanna be by your side, Shepard.”

“When you’re better, we can—“

“I’m in love with you.”

Shepard leaned forward, lifted Kaidan’s hand to his lips to lay a soft kiss on the knuckles.

“You do, huh?” Now his red rimmed eyes looked bright indeed. “If you pass out again and don’t remember saying that, so help me, Kaidan…” He breathed deep. “I’m in love with you, too.”

They talked, they laughed.

Before too long, Kaidan closed his eyes to sleep again. Shepard was there.


	7. Choice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of course they had to end up falling asleep together. This is me writing, after all.

“You know,” Shepard switched off the light, so only the glow of the fire illuminated the room. He snuggled into Kaidan’s chest. “They just named the old camp I did tech school at ‘Camp Alenko.’”

“No shit, really?” Kaidan chuckled, leaning back against the sofa, hunching down to give Shepard as level a surface as possible. “I guess we’ll add that to the list. You’re the one who’s been getting all the dedications, lately.”

“Perks of being a war hero, I guess,” Shepard yawned.

“Just heard from my mom that the hospital she used to take me to got named after you. Imagine, some little kid with a migraine and a bloody nose sitting in that waiting room, ‘Shepard’ on the sign outside.”

“Kid probably wouldn’t even know who I was,” Shepard shook his head, “Am. Whatever.”

“Depends if he’s taken ‘Shepard Class 101’ yet or not.”

“Please.”

“I’m serious, they’re going to teach all about you in school, obviously.” Kaidan sighed, “Probably all of us. Isn’t that wild to think about?”

“Ugh, Samantha wrote me the other day to tell me they just broke ground on the new capital on Horizon. ‘Shepard City.’”

“Wasn’t as if they were going to name it after me,” Kaidan was laughing now, Shepard lifting his head just a bit.

There were few people on the Normandy who didn’t have something named after them, after the war. But nobody had so many human colonies, hospitals, high schools, and the like named after them as Kaidan and Shepard did: the Alliance’s first Spectres.

Kaidan’s mother was keeping a formal list, but after hearing the way Shepard groaned in the background the last time she was updating them, she just sent the list to Kaidan. They each had been trying to put the war behind them in their own way, and for Shepard, avoiding any mention of the celebrity the war had brought him was the easiest way to go about it.

But tonight, Shepard had brought it up, so Kaidan got his ribbing in.

“Next their gonna rename my old school after you—“

“—or you, more likely.”

“—and then my favorite bar. Before you know it, I won’t be able to get away from you.” He brushed his hand down Shepard’s back, ran a thumb over his lips to receive a tiny kiss.

“Yup. Till death do us part, Kaidan. No getting away, now.”

“No need.”

So much had been taken in the war, most of the artifacts of both their childhoods—hell, their adulthoods, even—had been wiped out, smashed to pieces by the Reapers, razed in reconstruction. But new things were being built all the time, familiar names affixed to unfamiliar buildings. Familiar streets turned foreign with new construction.

“Did you ever think, back on the SR-1,” Shepard began, smiling against Kaidan’s chest. “That we’d end up like this? Together?”

“Sometimes I think I can barely remember how we met.”

“Me too.”

“But no, I couldn’t imagine this. Not back then, not once the war started. Not when I married you. I didn’t know how much I’d love you in this moment, Shepard.”

Shepard didn’t say a word, but just coiled himself more into Kaidan’s aura.

“I don’t recognize myself much, these days. I don’t recognize Vancouver. Hell, I barely recognize the Normandy. But y’know, it’s funny. I look back on when I was a kid, and it’s almost like you were there, y’know? I told you, in London, that I’ve had a wild life, and that I owe a lot of that to you. It’s funny how much you turn up in my thoughts, before I ever met you.”

“You’re your own man, Kaidan,” Shepard said, a little sleepy. “That’s why I fell in love with you. You don’t owe me anything. We did it together.”

“True,” Kaidan let his fingers card through Shepard’s hair. “But that’s not what I mean. It’s like… and this might sound cheesy… I’ve always thought that… how can I put this.” He took a deep breath, “When you love someone, it’s like there was never a time in your life where they weren’t there, y’know? I can think back to being a kid, and I can see you there. Back to when I was on my own, there you are. It’s all pieces of the puzzle in how I came to meet you, to be with you. And even when you weren’t there… you were. You are. Jeez, does that make any sense?”

In the soft flicker of the firelight, the only reply was Shepard’s gentle breathing.

“Maybe not,” Kaidan chuckled to himself, whispering now, “I’ll find a better way to say it. Plenty of time left to work on it.”

**Author's Note:**

> You read the whole thing, thank you very much! I dunno if that conceit worked for you, but I hope you got something out of all that... nebulous fluff, hope it was a positive of the story that the interpretation is left up to you, and not a huge flaw. 
> 
> I really appreciate it!


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